This is a strange one. I encoded one of my *.avi's last night and part way through the resulting mpeg becomes black and white. The *.avi was a color animation(cartoon). In Advanced Settings I choose CG/Animaiton for the Quantizer Matrix. And Noise Reduction Weak.

Has anyone had similar problems? Is there a fix?

Thanks in advance,

-- Michael S. Gilmore (mgilmore@san.rr.com), March 09, 2000

Answers

Do you have a G400?

I had intermittent problems converting AVIs that I had captured on my RR-g/G400 combo. A bug in the VidTools would kill the color information in the stream when it was not being decoded in real time (i.e. for editing or mpeg conversion). This was particularly annoying because the faulty mjpeg stream would playback normally in real time. The only way to tell was to look at the frames in premiere or convert to mpeg. Upgrading to the latest drivers and VidTools solved the problem for me.

-- Sean (sean@magnuminvestments.com), March 09, 2000.

I upgraded to the latest VidTools and still have the same results. What version of the VidTools are you currently running? The version I'm using is 1.52.033 (2000.01.20). Did you read anything from Matrox that might help me fix this problem. I've encoded the same avi twice with the old VidTools and once with the new ones and the resulting mpeg switches from color to black and white at the same place every time. Maybe my Panasonic encoder is having problems. I'll try using an LSX encoder and see what happens. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-- Michael S. Gilmore (mgilmore@san.rr.com), March 09, 2000.

Once you've upgraded your vid tools you'll have to recapture. The error is in the AVI, & the only way to fix it at that point is with a 3rd party software codec. It's better just to recapture.

Here's all my config info from the Information tab in the Advanced Display Properties:

Graphics Bios: 1.3 - 20 Display Driver: 4.11.01.1410 Mini-VDD: 4.11.01.1410 Matrox PowerDesk: 5.41.008 DirectDraw/Direct3D Driver: 4.11.01.1410 Microsoft DirectX: 4.07.00.0700

My VidTools are version 1.52

-- Sean (sean@magnuminvestments.com), March 12, 2000.

Thanks for all the great info. But, I have some bad avi that I still need to fix. I got them as broadcast and won't have another chance to re-encode with the new drivers. Could someone please let me know how to fix these bad avi's.

Thanks in advance,

-- Michael S. Gilmore (mgilmore@san.rr.com), March 13, 2000.

I dug up that software codec. It's from Morgan Multimedia. Their URL is dead, but they can still be reached here: http://206.67.49.166/

I haven't used it personally, but others have reported using it to repair these screwed up Mjpeg files.

Good luck.

-- Sean (sean@magnuminvestments.com), March 13, 2000.

Thanks for all the replys. Sean (sean@magnuminvestments.com) on VideoCD (http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a.tcl?topic=Video%20CD) suggested I use a different mjpeg decoder to deal with the "evil frames". He suggested the Morgan Multimedia MJPEG decoder which has a free full use version that expires on Apr. 1, 2000.

I set it up on my other machine so there was no confusion of which codec to use by default. Panasonic stand alone decoder doesn't seem to have a feature to choose the decoding codec you want to use. Anyhow, I encoded the avi per usual using the Panasonic encoder on my other computer and it worked! I haven't had time to judge the quality of the decoding, but since I can't recapture this stuff anytime soon, it'll do. If you need the Morgan Multimedia MJPEG decoder go here: http://www.morgan-multimedia.com/

It's cool to play your avis on a machine that doesn't have the Matrox Marvel G400 hardware decoding. It's slow and jerky, but neat, since you don't have the hardware.

Thanks for all the help. Rock on.

-- Michael S. Gilmore (mgilmore@san.rr.com), March 13, 2000.